'Everything went right' for Red Sox in opener

Wednesday

Oct 23, 2013 at 11:53 PMOct 24, 2013 at 3:50 PM

By Bill Ballou TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The Cardinal Way and Yawkey Way met on Wednesday night, and the Red Sox lead the 2013 World Series, 1-0. Boston did it by taking advantage of several Cardinals miscues. The Sox got another superb postseason start from Jon Lester and another clutch postseason hit by Mike Napoli to beat St. Louis, 8-1.

The Red Sox are 8-3 in the playoffs this season, have won each of their last nine World Series games overall, and have won six consecutive World Series games at Fenway Park.

Game 2 of this series is here at 8:07 tonight.

For Game 1, anyway, the Cardinals looked a lot like the Tigers with wings. They were charged with three errors and committed a couple more uncharged errors. When St. Louis needed a timely hit, it was nowhere to be found.

“In the postseason,” Jonny Gomes said, “anything can happen. It's all about capitalizing on mistakes and they made a couple of 'em.”

An error by shortstop Pete Kozma in the first inning – on an overturned umpiring call – opened the door for a three-run Red Sox rally. Boston scored twice more in the second and once again, Kozma was charged with an error in that inning, too.

“Everything went right for us, but we had to take advantage of those opportunities, and we did,” Napoli said.

The second-inning rally was not exclusively Napoli's doing, but he had all three RBIs via a bases loaded double into the gap. He was the last guy the Cardinals wanted to see come up in that situation. Napoli was 11 for 24 (.458) with 4 doubles, 3 homers and 31 RBIs with the bases loaded in the regular season. In the playoffs, he's 1 for 1 with a walk and three-run double.

In 11 playoff games to date in 2013, Napoli is hitting a modest .243 with nine hits, but six of those hits have been for extra bases. In the last five postseason games, Napoli is 7 for 20 (.350) with three doubles and two home runs.

“From the ALCS on,” John Farrell said, “his extra base power is clear…he's come up big for us. Particularly in Game 3 in Detroit, and every game since, he's been right in the middle of a lot of our multi-run innings.

“We ride the peaks and valleys with him. He's had some streakiness to his career path, and when he's on the good side of those streaks, he has the ability to carry us and he's doing that right now.”

Boston got all five of its early runs off Adam Wainwright, who settled down well after that and kept it 5-0 through five. David Ortiz hit a two-run homer off reliever Kevin Siegrist in the seventh to make it 7-0. The Sox got a run in the eighth and St. Louis scored on Matt Holliday's home run in the ninth off Ryan Dempster.

All that early offense made a winner out of Jon Lester, who worked the first 7-2/3 innings and is 3-1 in postseason play this year.

Napoli has earned a reputation as one of those hitters with the ability to dial everything up a notch when it comes to the playoffs and said, “I love this stage. It's in the spotlight. I really enjoy this time of the year, I guess. But it's just going out there and getting the job done.”

For only the second time in the playoffs, Napoli did not strike out, but he has whiffed 15 times in 37 at-bats so far. It's a price that has seemed well worth paying this postseason.

“I'm able to forget about an at bat to my next at bat,” he said. “You can't dwell on it when you get out; just go up there, have a plan and try to execute as best as is possible. I go up there and I'm confident every time I go up there, even if I struck out the last time.”

The Cardinals had only committed three errors in their 11 previous playoff games before Wednesday night.

“We had a wakeup call,” manager Mike Matheny said. “That is not the kind of team that we've been all season, and they're frustrated – I'm sure embarrassed, to a point. We get an opportunity to show the kind of baseball we played all season long and it didn't look anything like what we saw (Wednesday) night.”

It was a lot like what the Red Sox have seen from their opponents all season long, though. It translated in 97 victories in the regular season, and if it translates three more times this month, Boston will win another world championship.